Ch. 2: The Rooftops of Time
Back to Arheled The road twisted and curved among immense round bulges of some clear crystalline stone, milky grey and pearl. There were no trees here at all, but now and again one of the pearly knolls would rise up in a sheer and sudden crag, the rolling knobs about its’ base flowing like roots. The road was faintly shining and white, but the ancient surface was fissured and split, huge cracks running across it. “How far is it?” said Brooke. “Are you, then, feeling weary?” Tree said curiously. “Mentally I am.” she confessed. They entered a dim land of blue shapes drifting slowly by on a level surface, which at first thought a river until she realized they were actually moving things on a dark meadow. “We’ve been walking for hours.” “We are on the space of the old North Road that climbs up the side of Wallens Hill—what strange names men have given the Nine Hills, now that those that first walked them are dead. We must turn south again to reach the road that follows Main Street. It will be another hour.” “Oh well.” sighed Brooke. There was silence for a while as they travelled on. The road was so eroded that the surface had peeled in layers, causing deep smooth pits and flat crags. In places the dark field had crept onto the verges of the road, the level black stuff forming a curved edge like molasses. “If you touch that, you will never whiten that part of you again.” said Tree. “I thought I was a ghost.” said Brooke. “What imprints the spirit often reflects onto the body.” answered Tree. The deep dim blue far above was beginning to be spangled with red points of light, reflected occasionally from the strange darkness. They formed peculiar groups, yet somehow they seemed familiar, until she recognized the Dipper and was sure of it. “The stars in the other heres always mirror the stars in the prime here.” said Tree. “For by that are all others ruled.” “How many of these—layers of space are there?” “Many,” he answered, “but not multitudes. I have only walked on nine levels. I think the tenth is the roof; the roads do not lead out onto that, only up to it.” The road humped abruptly and descended a steep hairpin bend. The syrupy field disappeared. Now they were in a place of sheer tottering pinnacles of reddish stone, an overcast pinkness pervading the air. Queer shapes unfolded, motionless, out of the stone, as if it had been in the act of giving birth to strange creatures when it was forever sealed into rock: wings, half extended, or a long whiskered head, sinuous and evil, partly emerged from a crag; or a great serpentine tail, ridged with plates like a broken saw. “Do not speak aloud here.” whispered Tree. “This is the tomb of the Dragons. When they die, here they come, to sleep in stone until their Father summons them to the living again. No Dragon ever really dies. They sleep. A loud voice may wake them.” The road, still descending around a column of stone like a monstrous tree, curved down to the left until it had almost folded back on itself. The masonry of the ledge had in many places crumbled away, and chunks of the stone surface had gone with it. Then abruptly they reached bottom and the stone dragons vanished. The country that stretched around and beyond them was a forest of fern and peeling, mossy, ancient trees. It looked familiar. “We are nearly there.” said Tree. They walked on through the ancient, dripping, mossy forest, all green and black and damp old gray. A ghostly motion caught Brooke’s eye, and a phantom river snaked into view on the left, flowing through trees and old stones like mist. The phantoms all at once grew a little clearer, until she walked past ghost houses and shadowy cars roaring faintly down an unreal street. It bent and curved to avoid the river; the road Brooke walked passed straight along its’ line, now overlapping, now separate. It gave her a bad scare when a car roared right up and into her and on past, without her feeling even a breeze. “An interesting experience.” observed Tree. “That was—it was suicide.” gasped Brooke. “I so am not doing that again.” “You cannot leave the road, missy.” Tree replied. “They don’t faze you at all.” she accused. “I thought it was centuries since you came up here. How do you know so much about modern society?” “I listen to those who walk in Riverton.” he answered. “They are very talkative. Soon, old as I am, my former ways of speech—slipped away, to be replaced by your interesting modern dialects. Although I still cannot fathom what a computer might be, or how a book of faces can befriend…no, they use ‘friend’ as a verb instead of a noun. Nor do I understand how their fantastic devices work. Enough that, by seeing them used, I comprehend their purpose, if not their principle.” Brooke dodged another phantom car. A deep gorge opened beneath her now, on the left; a misty ravine, falling water and solid stone alike as dim as shapes seen through thick fog. A high bridge, old and marked with rust, sprang across at a great height, and stonework rose up from the sluicing channels, crawling up the cliffs until it swallowed them and rose up, a single wall, to form the foundation of the clock factory. “We’re in Winsted!” Brooke laughed. The two overlaying roads, the modern asphalt street like grey shadow and the solid ancient surface of eroded white stone that passed up its’ midst, bore them on. Shadow-houses clustered thicker. Shadow-trees rose behind them. They came to the Collage, and the townhouses around the Green, and the outermost of the Five Churches. Brooke caught her breath. For there was no longer any mistaking the true nature of this building. It seemed as if ten structures were superimposed one upon another, phantom towers and faint turrets and shapeless angles of roof and peak, and only here and there, in a squat tower summit or a round angle, did Brook recognize the shape of New Baptist. “The Five Churches extend as fortresses through every layer of dimension, to the very roof of Time.” said Tree. “Who wakes them on the lowest here, wakes them in all heres.” Slowly they passed the great complicated structure and headed on. The solid bed of the Star-road curved across the Green, ignoring the divided street. The haunted house in faint lavender and its’ much creepier but unhaunted companion drew near on the right, and Cypress’s ghosts stood on the porch, gazing into the eyes of Brooke with such somber despondency she halted and gazed back.'' '' '' “Shadowbrook,” said the ghost of Janice, old and clothed in frilly pale white. ''“This shall come to naught.” '' Still Brooke gazed, unable to say a word. '' “Darkness has no limits, and Darkness knows no limits.” ''the ghost of Chuck said distantly. ''“Not even the Road will be enough.” '' Their faces suddenly flinched, drawn with fear, as a deep harsh whisper sounded incomprehensibly from inside. Then they shot back into the house like sucked mist. Dreamlike, Brooke walked on up the ancient road. It turned sharply right and followed the sidewalk that ran along the right side of main St. Ghostly trees projected through the stone surface and ghostly young girls paced by in flapping sandals, misty hair blowing loose about them, their careless sad laughter echoing faintly. Like solid things in a land of spectres Brooke and the Tree paced on up the ancient road, under the shadow of Norway maples, until on its’ little hill the fieldstone church rose above them. A single tower of dozens of different shapes and heights seemed superimposed on it, gargoyles in every angle all pointing the same four directions. “You must go in there.” Tree said. “I don’t know what to do.” Tree seemed dubious, looking at the road, then back at the multitower. “I cannot fit.” he said. “There were two chairs. Great chairs of wood, with faces on the backs. I saw them when I walked here as man, so long ago, but if they are still there I do not know.” “St. James wasn’t built till 1923.” “In your here, yes. The Five Churches were wrought from the top down. Arheled built them. But those in the last and lowest here, the anchors and foundations for the others, had to be built by men. The carvings are the same in all, and the pointers; the ones that matter, at any rate. Go in. Find the Green Man and place your own face upon his, mouth to mouth, brow to brow and eye to eye. Then you shall say this: ''With lip to lip and mouth to mouth, '' ''I summon you from north or south. '' ''Leaf in the tree and the green in the wood, '' ''Come now and answer to me my own rood.” '' Brooke gave a tight little nod. “But if I leave the Road, can I get back?” The voice of Tree sounded fainter behind her as she glided up to the door. “As long as I can reach you.” Darkness closed over her. Brooke struggled, caught on the threshold of the Fourth Church. She saw layer upon layer of door, ancient wooden doors and corroded—but somehow not rusted—steel doors, doors of stone and doors of metals unknown to science, some before her, some behind, and some around her as she stood. Faces meshed with patterns superimposed over grids and seams of worn wood, like a picture all out of focus, as if she were seeing not double but multiple. Darkness closed over her. She struggled, trapped between doors and layers of doors. How could she choose one of the handles, when every handle was on a different plane of physical reality? She saw doorposts multiplied above her, low arching lintels and high arching lintels one above another, as if for every here the frame was a size larger. She felt stone touching her, cold and solid, and found her hand closed upon a handle like a lion’s head. Darkness closed over her. She struggled, trapped between layers of stone inside of the stone, each band of colored stone a complicity of countless tiny crystals as round and fine as sand. She was pushing aside great vines of ancient ivy that grew across the doors, or were the doors, those countless doors all present in the same place though all on different levels, and her hands fastened on the handle like death. It seemed to have a hundred shapes beneath her fingers, but she fastened her will to them, to all of them, and felt her ghost’s hand reach up through all the heres and grasp the countless handles, and turn them all at once. Then she was through the door and blinking in the dim interior of the old Episcopal church. It was the same square room she had seen once, under the bell tower, the vestibule on the left and a step higher. The place was bare of the literature that had speckled the Winsted church. Two ancient chairs of carven wood sat in the vestibule, dim as shadows. A glance at the interior showed the sanctuary filled with ghostly rubble from an evident repair job; which explained the placing of the phantom chairs. But solid amid the ghostly rubble were the same two chairs, huge and wooden, on her level. She walked up the aisle. The pews too were phantoms, as were the pale figures of the stained glass, but one window on the left side showed hard and real, lines and colors just as they should be. Except that this was the most grim and colourless window in the church. Stern figures stood there, all in white and grey. But she pushed on, through a ghostly altar rail and a phantom altar, to where the great chairs sat near the sanctuary wall. Doubtless the celebrant sat there during mass, but in this empty here they were the only furniture in all that church. Brooke faced them. They had high carved backs with white cushions, and in the center of the top bar was a large leonine face, fierce and stern, hair of carved leaves flowing to left and right, mustaches of a single leaf above the roaring silent mouth. She bent over the seat until her lips rested on the carven mouth and brushed the mustache-leaf, and her brows touched the crown of the leaf-hair above his deep-set eyes. She was astonished to find that her lips had physical sensation again, and could feel the had coldness of the wood. '' '' ''“With lip to lip and mouth to mouth, '' ''I summon you from north or south. '' ''Leaf in the tree and the green in the wood, '' ''Come now and answer to me my own rood.” '' A great sleepiness descended upon that strange and empty church. The phantoms of the other heres faded until they were barely noticeable, and with them the last remnant of color: the grey tomblike walls and squat stone pillars, the blank windows, pewless nave, and that one grey and white window. Under Brooke’s lips the wooden features moved. Swiftly wood softened to flesh and became warm, and she tried to draw back and found her lips glued to the chair, trapped forever in a joyless kiss. Then suddenly she was free, staggering backward, blinking. A man now sat in the chair. He was, in that grey stony chamber, like a brilliant window of color, as if a green sun had opened in some remote heaven and sent a single living ray. He was large and virile, his body huger than most men. Whether his hair and garments really were leaves, or merely of a green as living and vivid as ferns and hemlocks, Brooke was never able to say. The face was the same as the one carved in the chair. Green eyes like a light behind new leaves glowed into hers. His powerful hands folded, clasped, upon his knees. '' “Tell me thy rood.” '' the Green Man said. “I—want to go home.” said Brooke. “How do I get back?” '' “To break out of the roads of the Stars, you must set free the Builders of the Roads.” said the Green Man. “Tell me where they are.” '' “Seven times seven lie trapped in seven moments between the single moment. To reach them you must climb to the rooftops of Time and walk across them to the central tower, for no road goes there.” '' “What must I do there?” The Green Man took a shining fragment from his beard and placed it upon Brooke’s forehead. “Fasten that upon the Soldier’s eyes.” Then the green light dimmed and was gone. In front of Brooke were two carved chairs, empty as before. Yet a strange green reflection brightened the walls in front of her, and it followed her when she moved. The doors gave her no difficulty on the way out. Tree reached out a mighty branch and seized her, drawing her back to the road. He looked at her in wonder. “So, then, you have spoken with the Green Man.” he said. “Is it obvious?” Brooke asked. “You bear a gleaming beech leaf of purest green fastened like tape upon your brow.” he answered. “What was the word of the being in green?” “I have to free the Builders of the Roads.” she answered. Tree’s eyes widened. “The Builders.” he whispered. “Does he know of no other way? Can not one as mighty as he reach down and open a door? Or are the ways down in sooth so well defended?” “What is wrong with the Builders?” “They are older than mankind,” said Tree, “fell and fey beings whose thoughts and feelings flow in other veins than ours; they are not calculable, nor trusty, and they wield enormous power. Did he tell you how we will find, let alone free, these imprisoned ones?” “They are hid in seven moments within the present moment, but if we walk over the rooftops of Time to the central tower, we will find them. I must lay this upon the eyes of the Soldier.” “I hope that will be sufficient.” muttered Tree. '' He paused, thinking. “The rooftops of Time….” He studied the map again. “No, the ways there are broken, or too far off; I do not know if the road at the verge yet climbs there: it seems shorter than I recall. I have it! We will climb St. Joseph’s.” “Does that go anywhere?” “It is centermost of the Five Churches.” the Tree replied. “It is also the mightiest. The others reach up through the many heres….it projects onto the top.” They walked up the phantom Main Street, on a single band of solidity under gloomy trees. A few hundred feet farther they came out from the maples and stood under St. Joseph’s. If New Baptist had been a tangled mismatch of varied fortresses, and St. James had been a dozen towers superimposed, St. Joseph’s was like a stairway into heaven. The Gothic structure of everyday Winsted had seemed to pour upwards if you looked at it from right below, the towers and rooftops breaking off like a cataract cut short; but now Brooke saw phantom toppling structures as fantastic as clouds, rising one behind another and each one higher. Jutting spires and climbing pinnacles rose seemingly without cessation, until the pale sky swallowed up the faint shapes. “I thought all the heres were in the same space.” she said. “You need to go upwards.” answered Tree. You are seeing where your climb must go. For this steeple must be climbed, and every steeple is the foundation for the steeple in the next here; so that height of space and dimension are the same.” They left the eroded road and came up to the ghostly and many-layered doors of the main church. They stood open; a family was carrying up cleaning supplies to vacuum the church, and they followed easily. For a moment Brooke had the same bewildering sensation of passing several times through the same door, but it faded quickly. Tree seemed smaller somehow, as if his bole and branches were shrinking. Brooke commented on this. “I am not by nature of tree-size.” he answered. “Here in the True Church, perhaps my true nature is returning.” St. Joseph’s had a high square vestibule, with a door at the right-hand end that gave into the square base of the great steeple. A high square room was filled with a curving wood stair with great thick carved brown balustrades, that passed around three walls before reaching the choir. It began against the left wall. A closed-in bathroom stood on the right, like a box. Two great stain-glass windows, green and faint red, were half blocked by the stair as it climbed to the right. Red carpet lay underfoot. Tree’s roots trailed dark mud all over them. The chamber was over twenty fee high. There was a landing and the back wall of the great pipe organ, a locked door to the choir loft nestled in a passage underneath it. On the right a walled stairway projected from the wall, above the beginning of the staircase below, a locked plank door giving onto it. “It’s locked.” Brooke pointed. “And you’ll never fit in that cramped staircase.” Tree was barely touching the roof ten feet overhead. “You might be surprised.” he said, and pulled on the door. It became two. One remained padlocked and shut; the other, no phantom but solid, swung open. “You see?” the Tree smiled. Brooke had to bend her head to enter. The interior was cramped and dark, bare boards black with age and dust lining the walls, rough dry timbers branching out on the left. Tree must have slipped in somehow, for when she looked around there he was, filling the stairway with branches and yet not crowded. “Another level.” he said, sounding fascinated. They mounted up through huge webs of grey twigs that seemed as ancient and mossy as stone, and the stair around them was only a skeleton of bare timbers, open to the wood of stone trees on all sides. Then they reached a landing, and a stairway of stone went up on the right, unsupported. As they mounted this they felt walls of solid rock on either hand, dank and ancient, and small windows like embrasures gave out onto a strange view of wild tilted ridges, narrow and steep and green with pines. It felt like they had climbed above the world. Then they came to a trapdoor of old planks, which yielded with difficulty. Brick dust, pink and white, showered down on them as they lifted it. They stood in a high narrow tower with arched open windows, looking out on wastes of eroded desert, wild, red and gaunt. A long wooden ladder was the only thing that led upward, seeming frail and rickety, two wood braces supporting the middle. “I can’t go up that!” Brooke cried. “It’ll break.” “You’re a ghost.” the Tree answered. He was not much taller now than she was, with countless short branches and an abbreviated bole. “And you will go up it.” Trembling, she pulled herself from rung to rung, feeling the crazy ladder wobble, and then then, as she got higher, sway most terrifyingly. Not under her weight—she didn’t have any—but Tree’s. The crystal knobs and rolling knolls looked so far below when she again glanced out the windows that she felt ill. But Tree forced her on, and on she climbed, until she pushed her head through another trap—with no door—and stood upon a floor of wood. Small windows ringed the high conical chamber under the spire, set every other window half as high again as the window behind it. In the Winsted church these windows had stood out from the spire base in small gables crested with green copper lion-heads facing four ways; what outward ornament they bore here Brook had no guess. Through them she saw a confused and bewildering jumble of odd colors. Three great bells hung from the beams above the center of the floor, great complex gears for the ringing of the bells standing, wet and black with grease, up from both beam and floor. Tree was forcing open one window. “Come! We’re out of stairs, Brookling! We’ll have to climb the outside of the spire.” “Can that even be done?” quavered Brooke. “I can do it.” Tree replied. “Cling to my roots. Do not be afraid, and whatever you do, do not let go.” In one fluid motion his many limbs had let him vault out the small window and up on top of it. Brooke got both legs out and sat on the sill. Roots fell about her. She seized two of them; they didn’t feel like anything at all, though she had expected them to feel slimy, and she clung easily. The next second the world stood on its’ head and she was sitting on the gabled window, the copper lion-heads staring at her with silent roaring mouths. Tree, just above her, was clinging somehow to the slates that shingled the spire. Brooke felt dizzy. All around her were wild plunging hills of solid cloud, shifting and toppling continuously. The steeple rose out of them like a needle, the base invisible, the spire rising at a nearly vertical angle to the glint of the golden cross high above. Tree slithered upwards, roots slipping into a hundred cracks no finger could ever have used, limbs splayed out as if to embrace the spire. She knew somehow that it was amazingly cold, cold as a snow-clad mountain, the air so thin that Tree, if he had lungs, would never have made it. “Where are we?” she called, as he slithered up the tapering spire. A flash of light—lightning?—came from one of the cloud-towers, but no thunder followed. “We are in the storehouses of the snow.” he answered. “Or, at any rate, we were.” For quite suddenly, as they neared the great cross, the world around them changed. Great rolling hills, their trees bare and heavy with snow, lay beneath them, and far in the distance the land grew soft and green, and then rose, into a great brilliant whiteness at the very edge of sight. Snow was sifting down, and it grew thicker, and the glowing heights were hidden. “The Lands of the Seasons.” Tree grunted. “We are nearly there.” A howling wind struck the spire, battering the Tree. He cried out. The slates, slick with ice, resisted his frantic grasping. Slowly, sickeningly, Brooke felt them both begin to slide sideways, toward the border of heres, and then into oblivion. She moved without thinking. Like an arrow she shot up to the cross and seized one arm with her left hand. With her right she reached down impossibly far and caught Tree, heaving him up beside her by simply wanting to. He clung, quivering, to the golden cross in silence. There seemed to be no longer any snow. “How in tarnation did you do that?” he said finally. “I guess it might have been telekinesis or something.” Brooke said, as mystified as he. “I am a ghost, after all.” “Hmph. You might have saved me a climb.” Brooke looked around. The snowstorm, and the snowy hills, had vanished. The cross stood solitary and alone amid a field of level night, flickering with strange lights and patterns that flowed snakelike through the surface. Above them the sky was utterly empty. A black that was devoid of matter. They stood, she felt, upon the very border of things, the threshold of time itself, the last edge of Here. “Can we walk on this?” she asked. Tree slowly unwound his branches from the cross and moved cautiously out upon the shimmering swirl of the surface. “I think so.” he said. “What is this?” Brooke breathed. “Do not look down longer than a glance.” Tree warned her. “We are on the very roof of Time, and if we look at too much of the Pattern, we may never remember to move….it would be an eternity ere we could comprehend the countless threads and weavings of lives and causations that passed underneath our feet alone.” “Where is the Tower?” Tree looked around. “I don’t know. I am confused. I thought it would be easy to find.” “Wait.” Brooke exclaimed. “Of course. The steeple cross points to Soldier’s Tower!” “It points two ways.” Tree answered. “The central tower is a quarter mile from St. Joseph’s. Walk backwards for that distance and never lose sight of the cross. Be sure you are lined up right. I will wait here.” Brooke obeyed. It was terrifying to look down and see the weird and beautiful patterns of Time underneath her, but one glance was enough. It was like plunging her mind into a math book gone mad. Patterns of red, and threads of blue weaving into and out of them, and jagged lines of green, and black; intersecting shapes formed of the random patterns of countless winding strands, which themselves were part of vaster shapes and more complicated patterns made of the intermingling of lives and events, groups and families and thoughts of leaders, and thoughts impacting other minds, and nations and disasters, and the movement of graces and of Gods, of angels and of beings far queerer than angels…her mind swam, and she hastily pulled her eyes up and fixed them on the bright yellowy-gold cross, and the scraggled shape of Tree pale against the emptiness. When she had walked backward a good half mile and found nothing projecting up out of Time, she fixed mind and heart on the cross and let desire to be there fill her. Instantly she was, and taking hold of it she stood bewildered. “What do the stories call it? Teleport?” the Tree said dryly. He touched the arm of the cross opposite to the one she had followed. “The same thing as before. Do not look down.” When Tree had faded to a pale point in the distance, Brooke tripped over something. She looked down. The head of a spear rose up out of Time, breaching the surface. Peering back at the glowing gold cross she sighted: yes, a single line, it still pointed at her. She waved both arms. Tree reached her five minutes later. Both of them grasped the spear-point and pulled as if reeling in a rope. It gave, or they gave, and hand over hand they pulled themselves down. The gleaming roof of Time vanished, and they found themselves clinging to a mighty statue of green copper. It was twice as large as Brooke. A dozen sets of garment and armature seemed superimposed on it like phantom outlines, and phantom axes and bills and halbard blades showed ghostly around the haft of the spear the statue held upright. Faintest of all was a tattered banner-shape fastened near the top: the statue from Camp Hill on the lowest here. She looked down. The tower was the same size and shape as the one on Camp Hill, but the sides seemed webbed, a dozen different types and styles of masonry and stone superimposed. It seemed to stand on a low dome of bare rock, ghostly steps faintly visible in it, surrounded by a pine forest. Even as they scrambled down to the roof, the statue moved. The Soldier turned, ponderous but swift, upon its’ pedestal. Copper eyes blinked and focused. A bronze spear was suddenly pointed at Brooke’s heart. ''“What do you seek?” the statue said. “We seek to free the Builders.” said Brooke. '' “They are hidden. Time bound them. Do you dare to overrule the lord of Time?” '' “You are only a statue.” said Brooke. In a blink she was behind him. “Let us pass.” '' “None may find them, unless I open to them.” said the statue. “Then we will make you open!” shouted Brooke. She moved like thought, her hand reaching twenty feet and tearing the weapon from it’s grasp. An axe appeared to replace it, called up from a lower here, and whistled through her. Tree caught the axe. Instantly he froze, rooted in place, and try though he might he could not move. Brooke grabbed the statue and tried to rip it in half. A punch sent her spinning away, and she nearly fell of the roof before teleporting to a stop. The tines of the ax pinned her to the roof. '' “I will not open.” '' it said. Brooke teleported from under the ax, appearing on the statue’s shoulders. Ripping the leaf from her forehead she pasted it across his copper eyes. The statue fell still. The ax fell clanging from its’ hand. With slow stiff motions it turned to the trapdoor in the small roof and pulled it open. ''“Enter.” it bade her. Snatching up the fallen spear, Brooke descended into the tower. From behind her the statue spoke again.'' “Should you fail, you will not enter again. Unless the Green Man gives out another leaf. Should you fail, I will make you as I.” '' “What about Tree?” she cried. '' “Should you succeed, I will free him.” '' Not reassured, but with little other choice, she ducked through the trap and descended the narrow wooden stairs. Instead of curving around with the wall, they ended at a queer little door of vertical boards in an arched opening. An antique lock and handle operated it, but when Brook thrust the bronze spearpoint into the keyhole, it opened. Beyond lay a silver-black glow. The edges of the doorway seemed to shimmer, as if rimmed with blue and black fire. As she passed through it she felt somehow as if she was no longer in time, but out of it, or buried in it. The room hidden inside Time was wide and dark, the walls drifted in layers of light like shed leaves that shifted and sighed all around her. It seemed her sight was fractured: things seemed doubled, trebled, multiplied, though when she focused on one or another outline it became visible and solid. Figures floated in the air, shimmering as if seen through layers of water, figures of shifting silvery light, crackling at the edges. Now and then one would shift into a form almost human, with face and features and hair, but flesh of silver flame. There were seven, and yet more than seven. '' “Seven times seven, trapped in seven moments.” she said aloud. And all the figures awoke and turned to face her. Silver eyes blazed inside of silver faces, pitiless, curious, sad and fey. She felt as if scorched by cold. “Why are you here?” the Stars said in countless voices. “I came to free you.” she said. A cold laughter, bitter and mirthful, shivered from them. “She comes to free us.” “She says she wants us free.” “She is not the one. She cannot be the one.” “She is not the one. Only a human of the Road can free.” “I am a human of the Road!” cried Brooke. Like the falling of glass knives came the mocking of the Stars. “You are of the streams. You are not of the roads. Let him come to us.” Brooke felt herself sailing out of the chamber, blown backwards up the stairs. She sprawled on the roof. The statue peeled the green leaf off its’ eyes. “You have failed.” it said. “It wasn’t my fault!” screamed Brooke. “I take no reck of fault. I deal with law. You have failed. You must pay.” He snatched back his spear. He thrust with his spear. Brooke felt an utter, metallic chill in her heart as it transfixed her to the turret. Ronnie stopped in at the library, wanting to see if Forest was there; he’d dropped him off on the way to Travel’s. Forest was on the computer. Ronnie gave a grim smile as he thought how that must look should the librarian happen to stroll over, seeing ghostly fingers clicking the keyboard and the screen moving as by remote access. Or maybe Forest was visible. “How’d it go?” Forest asked, looking up. “I saw what I needed to.” Ronnie answered. “Move over. I need to look something up.” “Something about that “dark flow”?” “Can you appear so I don’t seem to be talking to myself? Thank you. Yes, as a matter of fact, I found a star map showing the relative positions of the Sun, the star Herald, and the constellation which marks the Great Attractor. Herald is along the plane of the Milky Way relative to us. So is the Attractor. Taking the Herald as ‘west,’ I located the Attractor as roughly SE along the direction of the Flat World.” “That rules out the Gates of the Morning.” “Not necessarily.” ruminated Ronnie. He caught sight of the library director, her glasses pushed up above her watching eyes, staring at him, and got up. “Let’s get out of here before they make us sign in. I hate leaving my name everywhere.” “Can you give me a ride home?” “Sure thing. I just have to stop at the Gulf station and gas up first.” The swiftest way across town, if you wanted to avoid the Main Street traffic lights, was to go up Wetmore and cut straight across the northern part of town. Ronnie accordingly, having parked down on Main, pulled out and turned right at Flatiron Park, then went up Wetmore heading east. “You were saying?” pressed Forest. “Oh yes. I was saying that the Attractor is roughly SE instead of E where the Gates are, but if the direction is more toward Vela, it would be due E.” He had to stop very quickly as it suddenly registered on him there was a stop sign ahead, and the keys swung. The queer heavy old key clanked against the others. “On the other hand, if it’s more toward Centaurus, it would be almost due south. Why SE, I can’t fathom.” The road ran level through the broad gap between Camp Hill and the high ridge of Street Hill, eaten down through the living rock in times beyond reckoning. Forest looked to his right, behind the big old square townhouses, up into the wooded slopes of Camp Hill. “Stop.” he said suddenly. “I saw something.” Ronnie pulled over. The old truck throttled down with a growl and idled, chugging away steadily. “Where?” Good old Ronnie. He never blinked an eye at Forest’s claims. “Um, up there. Camp Hill. At the top.” “What was it?” “I don’t know. A sort of flicker. Like the whole top of the hill was…” ''Somewhere…else… '' “Was where?” “Wasn’t where at all.” blurted Forest. “The tower was in a lot of wheres at once. Or whens. I don’t know! I couldn’t see!” “Well, heck with gassing up.” muttered Ronnie as he got under way again. He parked in the tower drive and both of them hurried up to the pink granite structure. Ronnie stopped, staring very hard at the soldier. “Anything about him look odd?” he asked Forest. “His weapon.” said Forest. “It’s….multiple.” “Explain.” “They’re…they’re all in one place, one weapon, but it’s different.” Forest tried again. “Like they stand in seperate heres, all on top of each other.” “Brooke’s roads?” hazarded Ronnie. “Uh uh.” said Forest. “This tower…it’s weirder…it wasn’t like this.” Ronnie laid his hand on the stone, frowning fiercely. A red spark shone faint in his eyes for a second. “Now?” Forest’s eyes widened. “Tell me what you see.” Ronnie pressed. “It’s in many heres.” Forest said, awed. “I mean, it’s here, and another ''here on top of that but still in the same place…” “Dimensions? Parallel planes of physical existence separated by spiritual layers or barriers? Different layers of the threshold of the Unseen?” “Sort of. But the tower…it goes all the way to the top.” “The top of what?” “Of time.” said Forest. He gasped. “Brooke. I hear her.” “I heard her too.” Ronnie answered. “We’ve got to get in.” Slowly Ronnie drew the keys from his pocket. The heavy old key hung from the key chain, tarnished, mysterious and intricate. “Arheled and Wild were wary of this.” he muttered. “I wonder if this is why the Sisters gave it to me…” He held it to the plain steel door. It slid into the lock and turned. The door swung open. Ronnie held out one hand, stopping Forest. “Can’t you see?” he murmered. “The door isn’t here…it’s in many heres.” “You see it too?” said Forest. Ronnie headed in, Forest behind him. The chair and guestbook were phantoms. Stretching away on every side were rows upon rows of great racks and intricate closets, and resting on them intricate objects, complicated devices of twisted and coiling metal, and weapons, and armour, and helms and shields. Right in front of them was what looked like a great two-handed claymore. Ronnie took it down. Though long it was not too heavy; in close quarters, however, it would be nearly useless. They mounted the stairs. When they were partway up the armoury vanished. Narrow windows gave out onto mountains black as tar, sad blue shapes coiling about them, a deep-blue sky overhead. They climbed to the second floor. The walls were veined marble, not cement, and the names in gold letters that flowed across the tablets were not New England names. These windows looked out on a landscape of rolling hills of crystal, fading from white and pearl into glass-like greens and delicate blues and violets; but no sun sparkled on them. Up the second stair they mounted, the landscape changing like a dream in the windows the higher they got. The third floor was made of golden stone, but the window frames were still half-rotted wood painted gray. And halfway up the stairs to the roof was a small door in the wall, and the planks of that door were planks of gleaming gold. Ronnie paused outside this door and looked at it, then back up to the roof. “I must go in alone.” he said. “Take the sword. See if Brooke is on the roof.” “I’m not a fighter.” Forest stammered. Ronnie gave him the claymore. Somehow it had changed, until it was maybe a foot or so long. “May the Road rise to meet you.” “And the wind be always at your back.” Forest replied. He felt like he was going to cry. Ronnie turned to the golden door. The key was glowing in his hands. Light burst out of the antique lock as they key turned. He opened it and stepped through. And door and doorway vanished. A furious grief in his heart, Forest shoved aside the trap door. It fell with a boom upon the roof. A great Tree stood there, with a human face, his roots turned into bronze and fused to the roof, and his bole and boughs stiff as stone. Forest whirled. Brooke lay sprawled against the turret, transfixed by a bronze spear, her figure slowly becoming green and metallic. Upon the turret’s pedestal the copper statue stirred. “Forest!” the Tree shouted. “You cannot challenge the guardian! Leave us!” “Leave you where?” Forest said. A cold dreadful anger filled him. “Leave her where? Who did this?” The copper statue stepped down from the turret. The roof groaned beneath it.'' “I did this.” '' “Why?” '' “I am the hand of Time. I do as I was bidden. If you are mightier than Time, you may overrule me.” '' Forest held up the short blade. With all his strength he brought it down upon the spear holding Brooke. A flash of power burst from the sword and the spear flew out of Brooke, clattering onto the roof.'' '' '' “How do you dare.”'' the statue said. There was no emotion in the metal voice, for it was not alive. The spear flew into its’ hand, fusing with the spear it already bore. Whirling faster than sight it thrust at Forest. Forest held up his left hand like a shield, as he felt something, some vast and ancient force, rising in him like a tide. His hand sparkled with green light. “In the name of the Road you will set them both free!” '' Silver lightning edged with blue ran up and down the statue. His spear fell from his hand. Slowly Brooke stirred, the metal ebbing from her substance. Tree’s roots stirred, flexing as they came free of the floor. The copper soldier floated into the air, lifted by the lightning. Forest did not lower his hand. With a boom the soldier settled on his pedestal and became inert. Ronnie floated, suspended in space. Around him drifted strange stars, green and white and silvery-blue, in a deep and tranquil silence. There was no trace of the door he had come in by, or of the captured Stars that Brooke had seen. Ronnie frowned. A curious red glitter began to glow in his eyes. He pushed forward, walking on the air. Stars crystallized in front of him, until he stood in in a chamber of arched and vaulted walls, yet these walls wavered like mist. He felt somehow as if he had sidestepped time, as if it was a great river flowing nearby and he drifting in a side current, still joined to it, but apart. Before him hung a globe of crystal. “Where are the prisoners?” he demanded. “Where are the Builders of the Roads?” The globe expanded outward, the sides squelching as they let Ronnie in. Inside hung suspended seven rows of seven figures pressed face to back, so as nearly to occupy each other’s space. Figures of silver flesh and silver hair, gleaming with a silver light. The captured Stars opened their eyes and fixed them on Ronnie. He felt a vast menance, a queer and dangerous power that might, literally, do anything, holding him in its; regard. He shivered. These beings were utterly unpredictable. They’d turn you to a toad as soon as look at you. Why had he felt so impelled to seek them? Why was he so sure he was supposed to release them? A weird, uncanny mockery flickered in the trapped eyes. Silver and crystal voices tingled and jeered as the Stars began to speak. '' “If it isn’t the son of the Road.” '' '' “Hill of the Road, come as he was meant, now unsure.” '' '' “Maybe he should run home.” '' “Name yourselves.” said Ronnie. “And why should we hold ourselves up to you? Free us, little Hill; and do as your daddy tells you.” “I come to free the soul of Brooke, not you.” Ronnie said in a cold voice. His eyes burned now as red as torches. “I did not come to set you free. You called me. You tried to dominate me. You trespassed into Time. You are justly sealed.” For the first time the Stars seemed a little uncertain. “The King of the Road did not send you?”'' “The Green Man sent Brooke here.” Ronnie answered. “Not me. I came because she was trapped.” '' “Then why are you with us, O Hill of the Road?” '' “I am the only one who can free you. But the Green Man did not send Brooke to free you. He sent her to you…for knowledge!” '' “And what knowledge might that be, son of the Road?” '' “You, and you alone, know how to bridge the prime here to permit her escape. You will tell me how to do it. I have the power to reveal what is hidden, but I do not know how to bridge the hidden so as to permit us to leave. You will give me this knowledge.” Then the Stars began to laugh, like blades of glass all dropping at once''. “And how, human, do you expect to compel the Stars in the sky, the binders of the heres, even locked as we are into seven moments from which we can only speak?” '' Ronnie held up the key in his hand. It blazed now as bright as molten gold, but the red fire in his eyes burned brighter still. Alarm flashed through the seven visible faces. '' “You have the Key of Arcturus.” '' they hissed.'' “You have the help of the Weirds of the Earth. How does it happen they would lend you their aid?” '' “Their reasons are their own.” said Ronnie. “You know the power in the earth, that was ever opposed to the power of the Stars. Now answer what I would know! I compel you!” Gold light rayed out from the key. The Stars swirled and writhed at its’ touch. Their voices rang again, mocking once more. “The Key unlocks the heres. Open here after here, and sooner or later you will be there.” '' Ronnie bowed deeply. “I will ask my lord Arheled if it is good to release you.” he said. “If he gives me leave, I will return.” '' “Fair words are easy spoken, human.” '' the Stars sneered. ''“Fair deeds are less easy. The word of a human is made to be broken.” '' “The word of a Star is as bad as their manners.” Ronnie retorted. He turned. Red light flamed in his eyes. The golden door swam into view. He unlocked it with the Key, and stepped through it, and locked it behind him. “Where are they?” said the Tree, as Ronnie emerged onto the roof. “Where are the Builders of the Roads?” Ronnie stared intently at the Tree. “I know you.” he said. “You are the reason that Brooke was sent upon these Roads. ''You are Wayham Lane.” The Tree howled. His trunk and limbs bent, contorting. Branches broke and fell away like autumn leaves. Bark peeled and crumbled. Wood poured down like sawdust. And there stood before them a man in garments of deerskin. “I thought you’d never figure it out.” he said. “Wayfinder cursed me. He said I would stay as tree until someone who could see, knew my face and spoke my name.” “And we nearly released the Builders.” shuddered Brooke. “I suspect some day we may yet have to.” said Ronnie. “But come. I forced them to tell me how to free us.” They descended the curving stairs, ignoring the changing views from the high narrow windows. Forest still bore the strange sword. When they stood on the bottom floor Ronnie pulled the door shut, closing off the outside. Under his touch the many layers of door showed plain, fancy handles and plain latches and ancient locks all superimposed, but their keyholes were all in the same spot. Into the layered keyholes Ronnie fitted the glowing key. He turned, and pulled open a door of stone. One handle vanished, swinging outward with the door. He unlocked and pulled open a door of wood. He unlocked and pulled open doors of metal, and ivory, and crystal, and solid gemstone. The last door was of plain metal. He inserted the key with great care. There was a sound like dozens of locks all turning at the same time. Slowly he pushed open the door. Sunlight poured in, showing plain walls of cement. Green grass lay outside. They walked out, blinking in the unaccustomed brightness, out onto the open top of Camp Hill, in the lowest and most important layer of physical reality, the ghost, the former tree, Forest and Ronnie. Brooke gave a sudden wordless gasp. She seemed for an instant to be elongated sideways, and then she was gone. “What happened to her?” said Wayham Lane. “I think she just snapped back to her body.” said Ronnie. “Well, Mr. Lane,” he added with a crooked smile, welcome back to the living. I’ll give you a ride to your house. After I gas up.” “My house probably perished centuries ago.” said Wayham uncertainly. “The Lanes still dwell there.” said Ronnie. “Grandmother Lane would be very pleased to meet you. She still has your journal.” “That old thing? Heavens!” laughed Wayham. “I cannot think what she would see in it. But…” He looked around, uncertainly. “There’s so many houses. They look so much more…frightening…when I’m actually in them. I hope Colebrook isn’t this built up, how you say, developed.” “My truck is right over there.” smiled Ronnie. “But first let’s go see how Brooke is feeling.” “Are you certain she will never wake up?” said Mrs. Pond tearfully. The doctor looked up from the life support machines. His face was somber. “Her vitals give every sign of remaining in this state indefinitely. She is only a vegetable now. Why would you want someone to be kept in this condition for year after year, until at last she slips away….hundreds and thousands of dollars later? The new insurance laws don’t cover persistent vegetative states after a certain amount of time, you know.” “It’s not like she can hear us, anyway.” said Mr. Pond. His face was haggard and drawn. Ben beside him had a placid, almost amused expression on his sallow face. “You really don’t have to worry, Dad.” he said. “She already is dead. Just lingering.” “I suppose….it won’t hurt her, will it?” said Mrs. Pond. “In a state like this, with no response to stimuli, it’s like falling asleep.” said the doctor. “A painless injection. Then it will be over.” “We’ll do it.” said Mr. Pond. He was starting to blubber. “Oh Brooke…” As the doctor had them sign various forms, Ben slipped up to the still figure on the bed. “See you in hell, baby sis.” he breathed. For a moment an eerie light flickered in his eyes. The doctor came back in. He ushered Ben back out into the passage. “I’ll call you in when she’s gone.” he said. “Doctor…you’re sure of this?” quavered Mr. Pond. “Yes.” the doctor said gravely. He bustled back into the room and closed the door. The eyes of Brooke flew open. The doctor, paying no attention, stooped to pour the poison into the life support machine. Something cold and powerful smashed every inch of his body. He slammed into the wall. His eyes were filled with icy water. Water was pressing him to the wall. A solid stream of water. In her bed the comatose girl sat up, and her eyes blazed with a light as green as water. “You….murderer….” she said, in a voice like a hundred rushing streams all speaking at once. “Death shall pay for death!” He was drowning. Water filled his lungs. He tried to speak but only burbled. Then the euthaniser slumped onto the floor, water streaming from his mouth and body. And Brooke Pond slowly stalked out the door. The shocked, ecstatic faces of her parents passed her like ghosts. Her brother’s face, equally shocked, and dismayed, she thought, as well; but that couldn’t be right, he was her brother, didn’t he want her to wake up? It didn’t matter. None of it mattered except going home and getting to sleep. Ronnie and Forest, and Wayham Lane, saw her in the parking lot, leaning heavily on her dad’s arm, looking rather dazed. She brightened up enough to give them a weak smile. Then she was in the car, and sleep could at last come over her. It was a strange sensation for Forest, riding in the same vehicle as a man who had escaped from the deeps of time, from the very foundations of America. Ronnie was asking him all sorts of questions, but the man from time only answered in starts, engaged in staring at the land that he once knew. “The hills look the same.” he said once. Another time, as they passed the old buildings of Colebrook Center, “They look so ancient…and yet I was here before them. It feels strange.” When they turned into the Lane driveway, he startled them by leaping upright (knocking his head in the process) and exclaiming, “The pond is still there! I though it would have silted up by now!” “I think Travel’s father made that one,” said Ronnie dubiously, “and before that it was a swamp.” He parked in front of the little detached house, waving its’ passengers to stay put while he knocked on the door. Grandmother Lane opened it, looking just a little puzzled. “Hello, Ronnie.” she said. “Won’t you come in? Did you leave something behind?” Ronnie shook his head. “I wanted you to meet someone. Someone you might know.” Grandmother Lane shot a piercing look toward the truck. The strange passenger was emerging now, carefully, looking at everything around him with vast interest. “Grandmother Lane, this is the man that I have brought.” Ronnie said. The old lady descended the stairs slowly and stiffly. Her eyes were dark and ancient as black stars. He looked up and met them, and for a long moment their gaze held. “You have his face, but you cannot be him.” said Grandmother Lane. “He died four hundred years ago.” “I vanished from the world three hundred and ninety-eight years ago, aye.” he answered. “And what did you leave?” “I left an old book under a candlestick upon my mantel.” “What did you last write?” '' “Blackberrie yet greene.” '' Grandmother Lane caught her breath. “Who bore your son, then, if you are him?” “The one whose face you wore when you were young, whose face I can see still in you.” he answered. “Henna van Horn.” The old woman seemed to sway slightly on her feet, her eyes glowing. “Then in the name of the house of Lane do I welcome you into my home, Wayham Lane.” Back to Arheled